You want to believe we’ll find solutions to big problems and the opportunity in every challenge.

You want to believe that we’ll get it done with a shared sense of purpose and a real sense of urgency.

And you want to believe we’ll aim high, dream big and do something great. Something gamechanging and groundbreaking, transformational and transcendental.

But lately, you find that keeping the faith has been a real test of faith.

You head into workshops, retreats, summits and brainstorming sessions energized and excited, fired up and ready to go. But you come out empty handed and exhausted. And frustrated that the only deliverable to come out of these meetings is to have yet more meetings that will be scheduled at a later date.

But don’t give up.

For your next brainstorming session, bring along the rules of engagement used by IDEO, a global design consultancy that’s ranked as one of the world’s most innovative companies.

“Brainstorming is a structured way of breaking out of structure,” says author and IDEO CEO Tim Brown, who believes nothing beats a good brainstorming session for uncorking a whole lot of ideas.

Bringing people together without ground rules is a bad idea that leads to predictable results.

“Without rules there is no framework for a group to collaborate within, and a brainstorming session is more likely to degenerate into either an orderly meeting or an unproductive free-for-all with a lot of talking and not much listening.” Sound familiar?

So here are IDEO’s ground rules for better brainstorming. Defer judgment. Encourage wild ideas. Stay focused on the topic. And most important, build on the ideas of others. “It’s right up there with ‘thou shalt not kill’ and ‘honour thy father and thy mother’ as it ensures that every participant is invested in the last idea put forward and has the chance to move it along,” says Brown.

Nike hired IDEO to work on a product for kids. While IDEO has toy designers on staff, they opted to use expert consultants. IDEO waited for Saturday morning cartoons to end and then brought in a bunch of eight to ten-year-olds. The group was split into boy and girl camps, told the same instructions and given an hour to come up with ideas.

The girls dreamt up more than 200 ideas. The boys managed fewer than 50.

“Boys, at this age, find it more difficult to focus and to listen – attributes essential to genuine collaboration,” explains Brown. “The boys, so eager to get their own ideas out there, were barely conscious of the ideas coming from their follow brainstormers; the girls, without prompting, conducted a spirited but nonetheless serial conversation in which each idea related to the one that had come before and became a springboard to the one that came next. They were sparking off one another and getting better ideas as a result.”

So in your next brainstorming session, stay true to the “IDEOism” that all of us are smarter than any of us. And act like eight-year-old girls.

Brainstorming is one of the ways to jumpstart divergent thinking. In the ideation phase of innovation, you want to generate, develop and test a whole lot of ideas.

Convergent thinking helps you eliminate options, make choices and implement an innovation. “What convergent thinking is not so good at is probing the future and creating new possibilities,” says Brown. So keep convergent thinkers away from your next brainstorming session.

Design thinking is about finding what Brown calls the rhythmic exchange between divergent and convergent thinking.You don’t create that rhythmic exchange by memo. And it doesn’t happen by accident. Brown spells out six essential preconditions for creating ideal conditions for innovation.

The best ideas emerge when everyone, and not just a privileged few, has room to experiment and permission to fail. Fail fast, succeed sooner is another IDEOism.

Folks who are most exposed to what’s happening on the frontlines and out in the world are in the best position, and have the greatest motivation, to come up with innovative solutions.

Ideas should not be favoured based solely on who creates them. “Repeat aloud,” says Brown. Folks who talk the loudest and the longest or have the biggest office don’t have a monopoly on great ideas.

Ideas that create buzz should be favoured. “Ideas should gain a vocal following, however small, before being given organizational support.”

Put the gardening skills of senior leadership to work in tending, pruning and harvesting ideas. A culture of innovation needs bottom-up experimentation and top-down guidance.

Clearly communicate an overarching purpose so there’s a common sense of direction and innovators don’t need constant care and supervision.

Above all, never stop asking how might we? This is the question IDEO asks at the start of every design challenge. Given the company’s track record, how might we is a question we should start asking ourselves over and over again at work and out in the community. And it’s a question that will help you keep the faith and design a brilliant solution.

In this age of rapidly shrinking attention spans and constant distractions, how do you get an audience to sit through your speech and pay attention from start to finish?

Do you treat them like children and tell them to put away their Blackberries and iPhones?

Do you treat them like idiots and remind them to set their phones to vibrate and mute their Lady Gaga and Hockey Night in Canada ringtones?

Do you single out and publicly humiliate the first person you catch texting while you’re talking?

Good luck with that.

At best, your audience will ignore you.

At worst, they’ll turn against you. And there’s nothing like staring out at a sea of angry faces who would love nothing more than for you to stumble and screw up your speech and make a fool of yourself at the lectern.

So here’s a better idea for getting an audience to pay attention.

Don’t be boring.

Work hard to earn and hold your audience’s undivided attention. Have something to say and know how to say it. Make it all about them.

To prove the point, go to TED.com. It’s website that archives lectures and presentations from the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences. These conferences are the World Cup, Stanley Cup, World Series and Superbowl of public speaking.

Do a keyword search on creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson. Watch both of Robinson’s talks on the need to revolutionize education. Each speech runs about 16 minutes.

Odds are, you’ll temporarily lose your Crackberry addiction. You won’t steal a look at your email and won’t feel compelled to fire off a quick message while Robinson’s videos are playing. Instead, you’ll give Robinson your full and undivided attention. The stories he tells will connect at an emotional level.You might even choke up. Maybe you’ll watch the videos again and you’ll definitely tell friends, family and coworkers to check them out. And Robinson’s key messages will stay with you.

Consider this your crash course in how to stand and deliver. Make these videos your benchmark and your gold standard for public speaking. Be like Sir Ken and your audience will love you for it. You’ll have us at hello.

“The ability to speak convincingly to others – to compel them – has to rank as one of the most important skills in business and life,” says Toronto-based author and communication skills coach Jim Gray.

“It’s the mark of a true leader. For many who aspire to leadership, it’s the one proficiency they lack. For many who occupy positions of leadership, it’s the one missing element that prevents them from fully realizing all that they can be.”

The good news is that you too can find that element. According to Gray, there are five keys to speaking like a leader.

Preparation. “Skilled presenters spend a great deal of time thinking about who their listeners are, what those listeners know and what they need to know in order to respond positively to the message being delivered.” Find that key insight or nugget of information that makes you a speaker with the answers.

Certainty. Realize that you have about 90 seconds to forge a connection and bond with your audience. “Maximize the odds that they’ll like and respect you. Start by speaking slowly.” It’s a surefire way to ease what Gray calls the ambient tension in the room, as the audience worries that you’ll tank and they’ll be subjected to seemingly endless minutes of awkward and painful discourse.

Passion. All great speakers have it. They speak it and the audience feels it. “You can have the best presentation ever crafted, but if you don’t have passion, you have nothing,” says Gray.

Engagement. Connect with your audience. Make your speech all about them. In any speech, “you” is the magic word. And if you want to really engage your audience, master the art of eye contact.

And commitment. Start communicating with excellence in every situation, whether you’re in front of an audience of one or 100.And become an expert at communicating across generations so you can connect with Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials who all see the world in slightly different ways.

Above all, avoid the cardinal sin of overspeaking. When you run over your allotted time, Gray says you’re telling the audience that you’re more important than them, so they should just sit back and listen to the genius that is you.And it’s usually lousy speakers who overstay their welcome, clueless and insensitive to their disconnected audience.

“Overspeaking drains time, reputations and an audience’s patience,”says Gray. Avoid it at all costs.

And if you don’t think you can get your big idea across in under 16 minutes, watch Sir Ken Robinson again and give Gray’s book a thorough read.You’ll speak and we’ll follow.

Jay Robb works and lives in Hamilton and blogs at jayrobb.typepad.com.

JAY ROBB works in public relations for a community college, reviews business books for The Hamilton Spectator & calls Hamilton, ON home.

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